The present invention relates to the field of automated transaction processing and more specifically to a system and method for processing transactions that minimizes the use of humans, or live operators, while retaining many of the benefits of live operator processing.
The field of direct marketing encompasses diverse transactions. These transactions often occur over a telephone, but are increasingly being conducted over nontraditional media including the internet. Types of transactions include processing dealer location inquiries, answering consumer product inquiries, taking customer orders, and troubleshooting product problems. Ideally, live operators would process all transactions. Live operators offer many advantages over automated systems. For example, live operators are able to recognize and deal with problem transactions, such as calls by angry customers. However, the cost of using live operators to process transactions is often prohibitive. As might be expected, when the operators are used exclusively, labor costs constitute a large percentage of the total cost of processing telephone transactions.
The high cost of using live operators has led to the use of automated systems for processing these transactions, especially transactions conducted over the telephone. However, known automated systems suffer from important drawbacks that make their use undesirable for many applications. Such systems are difficult and/or time consuming to use, often requiring users to listen to multiple menus and make choices using a touch tone telephone keypad. As a result, customers frequently become frustrated with known automated systems.
These drawbacks have led to systems that combine automated and human operators to varying degrees. Some of these partially automated systems use automation to route a call to a particular live operator. An example of such a system is one used for processing customer calls to a company for troubleshooting one of that company""s products, wherein the automated portion consists of prompting the customer to select the problem product from a list of the company""s products and connecting the customer to a live operator who can help the customer.
Systems such as these, however, are only partially effective at reducing costs for several reasons: First, the amount of automation achieved is relatively small. Second, the initial, automated portion of the transaction may be objectionable to some callers. Third, many inquiries may be more complicated than the automated choices. What is needed is an automated transaction processing system that automates as much of a transaction as possible without alerting the user that the system is automated, or an automated transaction processing system that automates a transaction in such a way that the user will not object to having the transaction processed by an automated system.
One labor intensive task that cannot be performed by known automated transaction processing systems is the generation of mailing addresses in computer recognizable form from address information spoken by a user of the system. Ideally, a speech recognition system would be used to perform this task. However, while present day speech recognition systems have the ability to recognize limited vocabularies from speaker independent sources, or recognize large vocabularies from speakers whom the speech recognition system has been trained to understand, they cannot yet recognize large vocabularies from speaker independent sources over the public switched telephone network. The size of a vocabulary needed to encompass all of the geographic and proper names in even a relatively small geographic area far exceeds the size of the vocabularies of the systems available today. Therefore, using speech recognition systems for automatically generating name and address information is not yet practicable.
One method for automatically generating name and address information in a computer recognizable form which is practicable today is to use the Dial Number Identification Service, or DNIS, (which provides the telephone number of the calling telephone) and ANI (automatic number identification) commercial address databases to generate an address based on the number of the phone used by the caller. This method is not very reliable, however. This is because the best commercial databases are only approximately 70% accurate, because calls are sometimes made from phones other than a caller""s home phone, and because a caller may not be the member of the household listed in the database records even if the caller is calling from home, such as one spouse calling in an order on a phone listed only in the other spouse""s name.
As a result, human operators are required to convert spoken name and address information to a computer recognizable form. The best systems today use a combination of human operators and ANI/commercial database methods. Human operators compare the database address obtained via ANI with the spoken response (either interactively or using recorded calls) and make any necessary address corrections to the database addresses. These methods, while an improvement over completely manual methods, are still labor intensive because a human operator must listen to every call to determine whether the database address matches the spoken address. What is needed is a system that can automatically recognize and indicate whether spoken name and address information matches name and address information in computer recognizable form.
Alternative communications media are also becoming increasingly important marketing tools. For example, the internet is becoming an increasingly acceptable alternative to telemarketing. Other technologies involving televisions and combinations of television and internet loom on the horizon. Thus, today""s automated transaction processing systems must be designed to operate with these alternative media.
The present invention provides an apparatus and method for automating customer service transactions. The apparatus comprises a plurality of automated devices, such as voice recorders and players, voice recognition units, and audiotext address generators, as well as a plurality of live operator terminals. The invention treats a transaction such as a telephone call as a series of subtransactions. Each subtransaction has data associated with it. The data may be supplied by the system, such as data corresponding to a prompt to be made to the user; or the data may be supplied by the user, such as the user""s response to a system prompt. Automated devices and live operators are treated as resources for processing the data. A transaction is processed by switching the data associated with each subprocesses to one or more appropriate resources.
Efficient use of human labor is made for two reasons. First, live operators are generally only used to process critical subtransactions or subtransactions that cannot be processed by automated resources. Automated resources are used to process the remaining subtransactions. This includes the use of voice players to play previously recorded predetermined prompts and messages, and the use of automated resources to process user input where possible and desirable. As will be discussed in further detail below, the decision as to whether to use live operators for a particular subtransaction is based on cost and quality considerations. Second, resources, including live operators, are only assigned to a particular transaction while they are required for a subtransaction. When a resource is not in use for one particular transaction, it is available as a resource to process other transactions.
The system is controlled by application control blocks that are developed for a particular application. The application control block acts as a script by defining the series of subtransactions necessary to process a particular transaction and defining the content of the prompts and messages that will be communicated to a user by the system. The application control blocks are specific to a particular type of transaction and may be specified by the provider of the goods and/or services.
For example, consider an extremely simple transaction in which a caller is responding to an advertisement seen on television by placing an order the product. The application control block for such a transaction defines a number of subtransactions including providing an introductory message, asking whether the caller wishes to order the product, inputting and processing the caller""s response, deciding whether the caller has indicated a desire to order the product, and, if an order is desired, obtaining the caller""s name, address and payment information (credit card number, COD, etc.).
Each subtransaction is classified as one of two xe2x80x9catomicxe2x80x9d functionsxe2x80x94xe2x80x9cplayxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9crecord.xe2x80x9d Play states provide information to the user (e.g. a greeting) and/or prompt the user to provide information to the system (e.g. address information). Play states are necessarily processed in real time unless errors occur. Record states are states in which user input is recorded and processed. Record states may be processed either online, i.e., as the particular subtransaction is occurring in real time, such as a live operator listening to a caller as they speak; offline, i.e., while a transaction such as a phone call is in progress but not in real time, such as a live operator listening to a recording of a spoken response made previously during the same transaction; or after the transaction has completed.
User input is always recorded regardless of whether the processing is to occur online, offline, or after the transaction has completed. Recording the input in each case improves quality by allowing for error processing. Consider a situation from the application control block described in the preceding paragraph where a voice recognition unit is assigned to process a user""s response to the query as to whether the user wishes to order the product. If an error occurs, such as the response being spoken at a volume too low to be processed by the voice recognition unit, the recording may be played back to a live operator for processing. The live operator may be able to comprehend the user""s response without having to ask the user to repeat the response. Quality is improved in this case since the user is not required to repeat the input.
The application control block assigns a preferred resource type to process each of the aforementioned subtransactions. Preferred resources are chosen depending upon a number of factors, including cost, quality, subtransaction type, and sub-transaction priority. Live operators are the most costly choice to process a subtransaction, but they also provide the highest quality. Similarly, there are cost/quality tradeoffs to be made between different types of automated resources. The type of resource chosen for an application often depends upon the importance of the subtransaction. For example, obtaining a credit card number may be of greater importance, and thus assigned to a different resource, than processing a subtransaction such a dealer location inquiry. Finally, the preferred resource type is also assigned based upon the type of subtransaction. As discussed above, a voice recognition unit can process a yes/no input but cannot process an address input; therefore, it cannot be assigned to a record address subtransaction.
The definition of the preferred resource type from the application control block may be overridden for a number of reasons. For example, during periods of low system load all transactions may be assigned to live operators to increase quality. A live operator may also be assigned to handle transactions for the purposes of obtaining a recording of an operator for a particular subtransaction for later playback during automated subtransaction processing. Error conditions, such as one live operator being allocated to perform two subtransactions at the same time, may also dictate overriding the preferred resource type. Another factor that may result in the override of a preferred resource type is the user""s profile. A user profile consists in part of historical data about the customer, such as whether a user is a particularly good customer or a problem customer. It may be desirable to assign live operators to such customers. Finally, a decision to xe2x80x9clockxe2x80x9d a transaction to a live operator for all further subtransactions in the transaction, which may be made at any point in the transaction, will also result in an override of the preferred resource type.
The user""s profile, besides being used to determine whether to override the preferred resource type, is also used tailor processing to a caller. For example, the user""s profile also contains the user""s geographic region, which can be determined from the number from which the user is calling. International users may be processed differently from domestic users, and users in one region of the country may be processed differently from users in other regions. Still other user profile factors that may affect processing include whether a customer is a male or female and whether the customer is agitated.
One particularly useful resource in the automated transaction processing system is an audiotext address generator. This device compares a spoken address with the address obtained from a commercial ANI (automatic number identification) database based on the number of the calling telephone. The generator provides the ANI address if the addresses match. Otherwise, a no-match condition is indicated so that the address may be generated by a human. The audiotext address generator may process live input online, or process recorded input offline or after the call.
An aspect of the present invention is the ability to give the impression that the transaction is being handled by a live operator even when it is not. One way the present invention may achieve this impression is by monitoring the call for error conditions and immediately allocating a live operator to handle the call when an error condition is detected. Error conditions may include such events as a very short response to a request for information such as an address or credit card number, the caller speaking while a recorded message is being reproduced, or errors detected by system resources, such as a caller speaking too softly for an audiotext address generator to function properly.
When an error condition is detected, the system may use a delay tactic while the live operator is allocated. One type of delay tactic is to play a recording, in the same voice as the greeting, such as xe2x80x9cI""m sorry, what did you say?xe2x80x9d While this is occurring, the live operator (whose voice was used for the recording) is allocated in time to hear the caller""s response. The response may also be recorded and replayed shortly thereafter to a live operator while a further delay tactic is employed.
Another way the present invention gives the impression that a live operator is handling the transaction is ensuring that the voices heard by the user is the same regardless of whether any particular subtransaction is being processed by an automated resource or a live operator. The system also ensures that the recordings of live operators are as natural as possible. Additionally, diversions such as playing recordings of keyboard clicks while the system is accepting data from a user add to the illusion of live operator processing.
The invention is also adapted to handle alternative media transactions. Simple e-mail processing can be performed by operators when they are not required to process calls. Other more complicated transactions are also possible. For example, in a situation where a user is having some trouble at a particular website, a connection between the user and an operator whose screen is synchronized to the caller""s screen, such that the operator""s screen contains all of the information on the caller""s screen as well as additional information for assisting the caller, may be desirable.
An object of the invention is to provide an apparatus and method for automating the processing of transactions.
Another object of the invention is to provide an apparatus and method for processing transactions using as little human labor as possible.
Another object of the invention is to provide an automated transaction processing system that gives the impression of a live operator.
Another object of the invention is to provide an apparatus and method for automatically detecting whether text matches the content of spoken words.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an automated transaction processing system that can recognize error conditions and connect the caller to a live operator.
Another object of the invention is to provide an automated transaction processing system that can automatically detect the profile of customer and tailor the processing of the transaction accordingly.
Another object of the invention is to provide an automated transaction processing system that can process transactions in a variety of media.
These and other objects and advantages of the invention may best be understood with reference to the following detailed description of preferred embodiments of the invention, the appended claims and the several drawings attached hereto.